


Capsized

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [5]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24787348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Further adventures on the Road Trip of Disaster. Their boat sank and they're in the middle of nowhere and freezing and Danny just might have been poisoned. Ward hates his life.
Relationships: Ward Meachum & Danny Rand
Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232444
Comments: 13
Kudos: 61





	Capsized

**Author's Note:**

> For a request on Tumblr: _Danny and Ward's boat sinks on a river out in some remote wilderness (why are they on a boat? who knows!), and now they're wet, lost, and possibly injured in the middle of nowhere with limited supplies._

The worst thing -- the actual worst thing -- worse than losing Mom, worse than anything Dad had ever done, worse than Joy looking him in the eye and telling him she thought he was pathetic and wanted nothing to do with him ... the _absolute worst fucking thing_ was the damn boat flipping over and Danny's limp body disappearing under the churning gray water.

Ward was actually a pretty shitty swimmer (as Dad-approved sports went, competitive swimming hadn't been one of them) but he threw himself out of the capsizing boat, kicking down beneath the silt-laden water. He tried to grab Danny, fumbled with Danny's shirt, bent several water-softened fingernails backward, and finally got hold of him, only to realize that Danny's limp deadweight was dragging him down, into the cold depths of the river.

Letting go of Danny was ... not an option.

He managed to get an unbreakable grip on Danny's wet and slippery hoodie, knotting his fists in the fabric, and curled his body around Danny's as underwater rocks battered them. Ward kicked off anything he could get his feet planted on, rocks or the bottom of the river, he didn't even know -- lungs screaming, desperate, absolutely convinced they were going to die here ... but maybe there were still saints or gods or whatthefuckever looking out for idiots, because his head broke water and he tumbled onto a cold and rocky beach, dragging Danny with him, coughing and gasping.

He rolled onto his back with Danny on his chest. Cold rain splattered his face. "You absolute idiot," he muttered. He kept his arms clamped around Danny, holding Danny to his chest in a deathgrip, because this way he could feel Danny breathing in small convulsive gasps, body occasionally hitching with a small cough.

After a minute or two, Ward figured out that the drops of rain striking his face were not, in fact, his imagination. Of course it was raining; that just figured, given how their day had gone. He was too worn out to even laugh about it.

He sat up carefully, Danny slipping limply down into his lap. Danny had been semi-conscious in the bottom of the boat ever since getting poisoned with poison needles flung by pissed-off temple guards a few miles upriver, because apparently this was their lives now. Ward had managed to drag a stumbling, half-conscious Danny into a stolen boat ... and now here they were, on the riverbank with night coming on, Danny still poisoned and now half-drowned as well, god knew how many miles between them and their Jeep, and probably still-pissed-off temple guards searching for them as well.

And it was raining.

Well, maybe that would make them harder to find.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, there was movement on the river, through the mist and the rain. Ward's breath hissed out and he got a solid grip on Danny and dragged him backward into the brush, just as a boat slipped past with several of the temple guards in it. Another followed shortly after, gliding deftly through the treacherous rocks that had capsized Ward and Danny's stolen boat.

There was no sound of triumphant yelling from downstream, so apparently the stolen boat hadn't been found yet. Ward hoped it would wash out to sea.

Danny groaned, twitched, and coughed.

"Danny?" Ward gave him a small shake, and helped him sit up, propped on Ward's shoulder. Danny's breathing was ragged. He blinked, eyelashes fluttering, and clutched at Ward's sleeve.

"Ward," he whispered hoarsely, and coughed again. After a moment: "Why am I wet?"

"Because we fell out of the boat." 

"Oh," Danny said. He blinked again. He was shivering, and Ward shrugged out of his jacket (not without a certain amount of regret; he was cold enough already) and wrapped it around Danny's shoulders.

"How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," Danny muttered. He coughed and then, as he drooped on Ward, asked breathlessly, "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, fine." More or less; he was definitely feeling some bruises now, and his chest felt soggy; he had to stifle a cough now and then. But compared to Danny, he was in _great_ shape. "Be nice to have that healing thing now, huh?" he couldn't help adding.

Danny flexed his hand, closing it loosely into a fist. "I could warm us up too," he murmured, and grinned lopsidedly.

"The Iron Fist can do that?"

"Better than a campfire," Danny said. "When I, uh. Had it."

He seemed to be feeling a little better. Maybe the drug, whatever it was, had started clearing out of his system. Ward still suspected Danny of being at least somewhat quicker at healing than a normal person (nobody got over a broken leg that fast, _nobody_ ) and it seemed to be helping him shake off whatever those poison needles had been tipped with.

Unfortunately they were still out here in the middle of nowhere, and all their supplies were back at the Jeep.

"Think you can walk?" Ward asked.

"Sure," Danny agreed with half-drunken cheerfulness. 

Ward tried to haul him to his feet, Danny's legs promptly folded like noodles, and they nearly went down in a bruising heap on the rocks. Ward managed to hold him (and both of them) up with an undignified double-armload grip under Danny's arms.

"Or not," Danny said into Ward's chest.

"God," Ward muttered, slinging Danny's arm over his shoulder.

They made it a little way into the darkening woods before he gave up. Danny could barely stay on his feet; he was weaving all over the place. There was no way in hell they were going to make it back to the Jeep at this rate, even if Ward could manage to keep them going in a straight line, which seemed highly improbable.

But the trees were bigger here, away from the river, with denser canopies of leaves that kept most of the rain off. In fact, the drifts of leaves under the trees were dry enough to crinkle underfoot.

"Stay," Ward told Danny, letting him slither down in a heap at the base of the nearest tree.

He dragged some dead branches over, while dusk thickened into darkness. On the incredibly minimal bright side, Ward thought, they were unlikely to be found this far from the river. The temple guards would have to search both banks for miles. And it actually _was_ pretty dry under the tree. They could stay warm, buried in leaves. They were going to be starving by morning, but there was rainwater to drink.

He couldn't believe this was actually seeming like a viable option. He couldn't believe that by now, he'd camped out with Danny enough that he was able to set up a camp in the dark, from scratch, out of branches and leaves.

If Dad could only see him now.

"What'dya doing?" Danny asked, as Ward buried him in leaves.

"Hoping that we don't die of hypothermia in the night." Or that Danny didn't expire from poison. He really didn't seem in any danger of that, though. Ward thought hypothermia was a bigger risk. He was soaked to the skin, his jacket was wrapped around Danny, and his teeth were chattering by the time he crawled into the nest of leaves.

"Ward, jeez, you're freezing." In the dark, Ward felt Danny fumbling around, touching Ward's hands. "Wait, is this your jacket?"

"You needed it more than I did."

"Well, you need it now." Danny squirmed in the dark, and managed to elbow Ward first in the ribs and then in the face.

"Master of martial arts, my ass," Ward muttered. 

Eventually they got the jacket off Danny and over the top of both of them. It was still warm from Danny's body heat. Ward huddled into it, and into Danny, too, who he had discovered -- via several months of sharing tents and narrow bunks -- was a human furnace. At the moment, Danny was colder than usual but definitely warmer than Ward. 

"Uh ... where are we?" Danny asked, having to blow some of Ward's hair out of his mouth.

"The middle of fucking nowhere. Because of you."

"No, I mean ..." There was a brief pause. "Were we in a boat?"

"We stole a boat, I mean _I_ stole a boat, you were busy passing out."

"I think I remember swimming?"

" _You_ weren't swimming. I was swimming for both of us."

"Oh," Danny said after a minute. He really was very warm. Ward was actually, contrary to expectation, warming up.

"And we're spending the night in a pile of leaves because you have to make friends wherever you go."

"Look, Ward, I wasn't _trying_ to ..." Danny trailed off and then huffed out a sigh that ruffled Ward's hair. Ward could almost feel Danny walking back his anger, his body going tense and then slowly relaxing. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Being apologized to by younger siblings was Ward's kryptonite, which of course both younger siblings had figured out. 

"We've slept in worse places," Ward said gruffly, squirming to try to get a tree root out of his ribs. "Remember that night we spent hiding from militia gunmen in the abandoned well? Or how about the time we got locked in that shed with the spiders ... actually, you know what, all of those times were your fault too."

"I _said_ I was sorry."

"Dumbass," Ward muttered. He had one arm wrapped around Danny's shoulders, his hand spread on Danny's back. He could feel the beating of Danny's heart, and Danny's breath brushing across his hair. "How are you feeling?"

"A little better," Danny said. After a minute, "Hungry."

"Of course you are." Another reason why he didn't quite believe that Danny was no longer chi-healing himself: no one could eat as much as Danny did and stay that thin. "Well, too bad, because they don't exactly have catered hotel breakfasts in the middle of the fucking wilderness. Unless you think you could find some mushrooms or something with your spectacular survival skills."

"Actually," Danny began, and tried to sit up. Ward grabbed a fistful of his hoodie and pulled him back down.

"Oh no you don't, your freakish body heat is the only thing keeping us both from dying out here, so you're staying here and keeping me warm, not poisoning us with mushrooms."

"I was thinking tubers, actually," Danny said, but he obediently cuddled up with Ward again. "There were these big tubers that Master Wen taught us to --"

"Danny, if you start telling K'un-Lun stories, I swear to God --"

"I was just pointing out that this is the sort of place where they'd probably grow."

"Yes, in a mystic monk city in the Himalayas. I am not eating raw tubers you dug out of the ground in the dark because I, unlike you, have some sense of self-preservation. And since we are nowhere near a hospital, I feel it only fair to warn you that if I catch you poisoning yourself with random wild plants, I will throw you in the river. And did I mention you're the only thing stopping us from dying of hypothermia?"

"Yes, okay," Danny said, and he awkwardly patted the back of Ward's head. "I'm not going anywhere, Ward."

"Give my life choices up to this point, I cannot _believe_ that I have turned out to be the voice of common sense around here," Ward muttered into Danny's chest.

"Yes, absolutely, you have never gotten us into any danger at all, Ward."

"... is that sarcasm? I literally pulled you out of a river today. Idiot."

"I know," Danny said. He pressed his cheek against the top of Ward's head. "Thanks. You made a really good pile of leaves, too."

"Damn right I did."


End file.
